


though the stars walk backward

by freudiancascade



Series: a softer red planet [2]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Don't @ me about it, Established Relationship, I (like most of this fandom) am choosing to ignore key moments in Final Resting Place, M/M, Rita is a queen and a goddess and we don't deserve her, dubious astrology, i deliver what i promise sometimes, jupeter, shameless fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 05:40:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15679128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freudiancascade/pseuds/freudiancascade
Summary: Every morning, Rita traps Juno by the coffee pot to read their horoscopes. And sometimes, Nureyev joins in.





	though the stars walk backward

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the usual suspects, @intrikate and @mrslovelace, for encouraging this! You can think of this fic as happening in the same continuity as The Charmed and The Charming, if you want. I'm totally cool with a universe where everything is gay and nothing hurts.

The coffee pot hummed and Juno reached for this favourite mug, only to get it swatted out of his grasp.

"Nuh huh, Mista Steel, you know the drill, no coffee until after we read your horoscope!"

He flinched. ”Rita. Rita, no. Rita -- why are you holding the caffeine hostage over this? It's going to be the same old crap as any other day! Am I going to be unlucky in love? Make poor money decisions? Lose my other eye? Let's spin the wheel and find out how the universe is out to get me today."

"Now, ain't that just like a Scorpio to say!" Rita brandished the rolled-up newspaper at Juno again and added, "You hush. This is very important! How are we gonna make the most of the day if we don't know what's gonna happen in it! If the stars really are out to get you, wouldn’t you wanna be warned about it first?”

"Rita. You, uh, do know that crap isn't real, right? And even if it were, we're on the wrong planet for it?” Juno struggled for a moment to recall Mick’s Martian calendar, but gave up almost immediately.

She gasped. "Of course it's real! Why would they bother printing it if it wasn't! Now let's see here, oh, look! _**Scorpio**_ : _The energies from the planets are going to reverberate through you to your core today, and you will be a magnet for romance_. Ooh, isn't that good news, boss? _Now is a good time to reconnect with your partner, and make time to see each other's_ \--"

Behind her, the window slid silently open. Nothing happened for a moment, and then a familiar face popped up over the sill. Peter Nureyev was grinning like a fox, looking entirely too pleased with his sense of timing. Juno shushed him with a wave of the hand, trying to gesture to go around the building and use the front door for a change, especially right at this very moment, goddamn it all, but it was no use. Rita blinked, pivoted around, and her face lit up.

"-- _points of view, because communication will come extra_ \-- oh, hello there, it's you! Boss, I told you so, these horoscope things are real, it said you'd have a good day for love and here he is!" Rita's eyes were bright with triumph. Nureyev, now well and thoroughly busted, launched himself gracefully up over the sill and landed lightly on the balls of his feet.

"Hello, Rita." He swept a hand in a bright flourish, and his voice dipped into a register that did unfair things to the pit of Juno's stomach as he continued, "Hello, detective."

"Hello hello," Rita said, oblivious, moving to the thief in a flurry to press the coffee that she'd prepared for Juno into Peter's hand instead. "What's your sign gonna be today?"

Peter accepted the mug, strode across the room to give Juno a light peck on the cheek in greeting as he handed the coffee back to its rightful owner, and then brushed past them both on his way to the hot plate to prepare his own cup. He tilted his head in careful consideration as he poured himself a drink from the carafe, and then announced, "I believe I'll be spending the majority of today as an Aquarius, my dear."

It really wasn't fair. The thief had been out all night committing all kinds of illegal acts (Juno knew full well he hadn't been home) and the artfully chosen pair of sunglasses hid the dark circles around his eyes, obscuring the physical testament to how long it had been since the last time he properly slept. Still, Nureyev breezed effortlessly around the reception area like he owned the goddamn place, all graceful movements and dazzling edges as he fixed his cup. He smelled good, and he looked good, and he was decidedly unfair.

Juno had to make a conscious effort not to pout. Or stare.

“Oh, drat, I’m an Aquarius so I’ve already read that one, could you pick something else? This is a fun game and all that, but you still really need to give me your actual real birthday, you know, so I can do you up a proper star chart all fancy and like."

"I can't do that," Peter said, leaning lightly against the counter. "I was orphaned young, so I'm afraid I have no details to give you."

"Oh, I see! That's a real sad story, very tragic." She sniffed. “So that's what we're going with today instead, is that it? Bit rude, you could have just said you didn't wanna play, now I feel all weird and bad."

"It's real." He shrugged, peering out the window with his hands curled around the cup. "I'm not certain where I was born, let alone when."

"Leave him alone, Rita," said a weary Juno, his hands still folded around his mug. "Remember what happened last time you tried making a star chart?”

“And it was right, wasn’t it! I told you the lady was gonna end up being the killer and would ya look at that, the stars were right!”

“Because she tried to kill ME, Rita.”

“The point stands, boss! I tried to warn you, I really and truly did, it’s not my fault you didn’t listen to my perfectly good detective methods!”

“They’re not perfectly good! They’re garbage, and I’m sick of hearing about it!” Juno snapped, suddenly sharp.

Nureyev lifted an eyebrow.

"Well, ain't that real nice of you! If you actually bothered to listen, you'd know they're full of plenty of good advice! Like how you need to communicate instead of yellin' all the time!" Rita snapped back, not missing a beat.

"I do NOT yell too much!"

"You're doing it right now!"

"I never asked for your advice!"

"It's not mine, it's the stars!"

He snapped. In that instant, it was almost possible to hear something inside Juno's mind ping loose and come flying out of his mouth like a shot from a blaster, "I NEVER ASKED THEM, EITHER!"

In the silence that fell, Juno took the opportunity to retreat; the door slammed shut behind him hard enough to rattle the open window. Nureyev closed it with a gentle hand while Rita dropped with a huff into her chair, her lower lip jutting out in a pout.

Nureyev winced into the silence. "If it's okay with you, my dear, I think I'll take this coffee to go."

—x—

Getting up to the roof of the apartment building where Juno lived involved climbing out a window, some minor parkour, and a moment or two of hanging by one's hands off a fire escape and swinging across to a brick facade that hadn't yet crumbled to the sidewalk below. Frankly, Peter was impressed Juno even bothered on a regular basis. When night had crept across the sky, the apartment was empty, and that particular window was left open, though, there was only one place Juno would have reasonably gone.

And the nighttime view was worth it.

Hyperion City stretched out below them: the dingy outskirts sending a rush of traffic and muffled sirens and the sounds of city life upwards, the skyscrapers far enough away that their towering might dotted the skyline with both possibility and certainty, the rest of the horizon between the two teeming with the sounds, smells, and lights of people going about their lives. Above, the atmospheric dome distorted the stars above their heads. Peter crossed the rooftop to where Juno was sitting with feet dangled out above the street, spread out his coat on the pitted concrete surface, lounged, and waited to be noticed.

He was better at being patient than Juno was at feigning aloofness, anyways.

The detective finally broke and acknowledged him without turning, his frown pronounced in profile. "What do you want, Nureyev?"

“Obscene amounts of money, a weekend at the spa and, while we’re dreaming, I could use a really good mimosa. But failing that, I’d settle for a good talk with the love of my life, so I can better understand why he's in such a tizzy."

The scowl deepened. “Let me know if you find him, then.”

“I have it on good authority the lady’s around here somewhere," Nureyev shot back, deliberately mild.

“And here I thought we had a perfectly good companionable silence going.”

“We can go back to it in a minute, I promise. Juno, I just wanted to check in after the fight this morning. I didn’t mean to start an argument between you and Rita. I know you rely on her, and it wasn’t my intent to make things difficult.”

“You didn’t do anything,” Juno said immediately, breathing out hard through his nose. “I keep trying to tell her to cut that horoscope crap out.”

“Why?”

"Because it’s a load of bullshit, taking up valuable air and making it stink."

“That’s evocative, but I might need a little bit more —”

"Because there isn't some bigger cosmic picture that gets tapped out onto the sky when we're born, that's why! There is no vast tapestry of fate that gets dropped onto our shoulders as soon as we take our first breath. There's just people, making themselves up as they go along, and that's the end of it! The stars -- _**the stars don't give a shit**_!" Juno drew a sharp breath, realized he'd raised his voice to shout at the curved underside of the dome above. _Damn it all, maybe Rita was right about the yelling._

"I see," Peter said quietly.

Somewhere in the vast black beyond the dome, balls of gas danced and twinkled; from down here on the surface of Mars, they only looked warped. Juno clenched his fists tight enough to hurt. "Nobody gives a shit! It's on you how it turns out, not some celestial mumbo jumbo! _People_ make mistakes, and it sure as hell isn't because they were born under a bad star sign! Either you make yourself something worth being, or you don't, and either way, the universe doesn't give a single damn shit what you do or who you hurt along the way!"

Nureyev looked down at his hands, silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was deliberately, deathly quiet. "Of course you have to believe that, Juno."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"That I do, too." The thief glanced up to the night sky now, his thoughts almost visibly swirling around his head. Juno wished, just for a moment, that he could still decipher them -- but no, that time had long passed. "I've never wanted to be honest about my history to anybody before, you know. Even when I thought I knew where I'd come from, it was still a story I wanted told to me, not anything I was interested in explaining to anybody else. This is all very new to me, and very strange, and I suppose there's an irony in knowing that even though I want to tell the truth about who I am, I am literally quite incapable of it."

"Nureyev, I --"

"Oh, don't look at me like that!" he snapped. His eyes stayed fixed on the stars above even as he raised his voice, unblinking. "I'm not some pitiful thing, lost and adrift in a cruel ocean of possibility! I get to remake myself whenever I please, rebuild myself, be reborn. I've been given an incredible freedom, one most people could never even imagine! It's just...it's been a very long time since I had to think about what I may have given up in exchange."

It was Juno's turn to pause, considering. Finally, he offered, "For what it's worth, sometimes knowing where you came from ain't so great. I know full well what gutters I crawled out of. Don't need the sky rubbing raw sewage in my face, too.”

For a rare instant, Nureyev was at a loss for words. ”I’m sorry.”

Juno scowled. ”Cut that out, now you're the one looking at me like that."

Peter's mouth twisted, and he shook his head. "Fair, my apologies. If it helps at all, I believe I may have the opposite problem. Rex Glass, Duke Rose, Elias Noble, Perseus Sha, the list continues...for every person I've been, I could tell you anything you wanted to know. Where and when they were born, what their parents were like, if their early childhoods were happy, what dominoes were set in motion earlier than they can remember that went on to shape the rest of their lives. Rita could make star charts to her heart's content. And yet, I don't have any of that information about Peter Nureyev. I'm a mystery to myself. It's very odd." Peter flashed a quick grin down at the detective, his teeth sharp, though it was a gesture that didn't entirely reach his eyes. "I suppose one of us will have to apologize to Rita, to keep the peace. I can bring her some chocolates."

Juno sat up slowly, rubbing at the back of his neck to work a kink out of it. "You don't have to. It's none of her business. You don't owe that to anyone."

"Oh, I know that. But you're not listening to me, Juno. I've spent my whole life living a series of beautiful lies, each one more stunning than the last. But for the first time, now, I find myself actually wanting to live in the truth. Not with everybody, not all the time, heavens no." He shuddered, almost involuntarily. "But, here. You, and me. We're building a life together, and no, our stars don't get to have any input in the matter. But it's still making me think, more than I have before, about exactly what they would have said about who we're choosing to become."

"With our luck? They'd probably say everything is perfect, and immediately jinx it forever. We don't need that." Without thinking, Juno reached for his hand. Peter took it, offering a gentle squeeze. "You bring the chocolates, then. I'll dig up one of those trashy romance novels she likes so much. We'll leave them on Rita's desk when she's distracted by her streams, she'll get the message."

"I might have a better idea for a compromise. But only if you find it amenable."

"You always worry me when you say things like that," Juno sighed, resting his head on Peter's shoulder.

"I can't imagine why. My ideas have a perfectly good track record,” the thief responded primly, closing an arm around his detective.

“If by that you mean they take off running like champion sprinters far too often for their own good, sure.” All the same, Juno nestled in against the warmth of Peter’s body.

Peter sighed, but decided that the point could stand. He could cede that small bit of ground.

Companionable silence settled in. Above the rooftop where they sat together, the indifferent stars still danced their slow ballet across the sky.

\--x-- 

Another morning, another coffee pot bubbling away in the corner while Rita flicked through the newspaper and circled anything especially interesting while Juno slouched half-awake behind his desk, pretending to flick through case files. This time, though, Nureyev sat beside him. Perched on the edge of the desk like a cat, Peter's legs hung above the worn floor and his shoes shone as he traced dance steps in the air with his feet. Juno tried not to watch, mesmerized all the same by the practiced movements. Like everything about Nureyev, they betrayed an equal balance of precision and artistry. A body that was both weapon and work of art. Stunning, no matter which direction you sliced.

The silence in the office said magnitudes about how angry Rita must have still been with them both. Usually she was insufferable when the two of them arrived in any kind of order that implied they'd spent the night together, or when she knew she had Juno cornered by the coffee pot in the morning, or when she -- well, existed, really. Deliberate silence was reserved for real infractions on the peace.

Peter finally looked up from the notepad in his hand, and Juno could see the moment he committed. It was like a lightbulb going on, the way Peter Nureyev moved when he had a plan. Made his way across the office, light on his feet, and set the sheath of paper down on the corner of Rita's desk. "Here you are."

"What's that?"

"A peace offering."

The secretary squinted at the elegant script on the pad. "Oh?"

"I may not know my exact birthday, but we can consider that...well, an educated guess."

Rita blinked, and then cooed like a satisfied pigeon as she swivelled the pages around to read. “Ooh, I see, that makes you a Gemini then!” She hummed as she plugged the date and time into her computer, and then whistled under her breath. “Hang on, that was the same day the mask case happened! Well, ain’t that a coincidence? Don’t you think, Mista Steel? It was his birthday the whole time!”

Juno swallowed hard, casting a glare across the room. "Uh huh. Coincidence. Sure."

—x—

He was able to hold back his objections until out of earshot of Rita, but only barely.

“I just don’t love it, Nureyev,” Juno said, shrugging into his coat. “Picking the day we met. Feels like a lot of pressure, to me.”

Peter’s voice was soft, though his eyes were distant. “Oh, Juno. I love you more than anything, but this one -- it’s not about you. Partially, yes, but not really. I still don’t know my birthday, but I do know full well when I chose to be reborn. I’m the one who wrote down my name on that piece of paper. I’m the one who chose to bring Peter Nureyev back from the dead. And as far as the stars are concerned, I think we can agree that rebirths count.”

“Yeah, yeah. I get it. You’re a regular phoenix from the ashes.” Juno reached for him, almost involuntarily. Tucked Peter’s collar up against the wind, rough fingertips briefly lingering against the man’s cheek.

“Hardly. I pride myself on my ability to not die, and ashes make such a mess.” Nureyev tipped his head to kiss the heel of Juno’s palm, just once, gentle. “But I do love when you get poetic on me. Makes me all tingly inside.”

“Don't get too excited -- that might just be whatever you've been drinking. I don't know what Rita was brewing, but given how mad at us she was this morning, I'm pretty sure it wasn't coffee.”

Peter laughed, a bright and genuine sound. "Just when I'd finally decided to trust somebody? If we're not careful, detective, betrayal like that will be enough to turn me into a pessimist."

"Don't you dare," Juno warned. "If you're going to choose a star sign known for their optimism, you'd better _commit_. At least, when Rita's around to hear it, or we're all never going to hear the end of it."

"Ha! You, telling me how to get into a character? I'm flattered, but I believe I can handle myself in that arena just fine."

"Don't I know it," Juno said, and felt -- for a rare moment -- a deep-strung tension lift briefly from his shoulders.

Maybe the stars didn't have a damn thing to do with Peter Nureyev. Juno sure didn't believe anything so simple and fixed could build a person who slipped with such elegance and grace through life, and who could barrel right into his office (and his heart) without so much as an eclipse or meteor shower to mark the occasion. In some ways, it was the least portended thing in the world -- just the solid body of a person beside him, the warmth of a hand wound around his waist, the smell of a cologne swirling in the gust of air as he opened the door and gestured out to the street. _The scent of some far-off galaxy_ , Juno thought, and smiled despite himself.

They'd had enough of the stars. For now, Mars beckoned. Hyperion City, alive and vibrant, awaited on the other side of the door.

For now, that was more than enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I know, the Martian calendar sucks. Nobody tell Rita that. As far as I can tell, Day that Wouldn't Die happened in November, and Murderous Mask was about six months before that. So, Nureyev gets to be a Gemini. Because we all know he isn't really the Taurus type.


End file.
